Strange Carroll-esque dreams...

Note: There was a whole dream story preceding this first 'Block A' dream, the details of which evaporated very quickly after waking at around 0400. The second dream is from 'Block B.' ('Block C' dreams, due to their trivial content, I rarely bother recording.)

I find myself in a car park at twilight, with the semi-deserted feeling of a suburban magical grove. I am transcribing into my files a story about a journalist who vigorously rejects the Big Brother society and gets implanted by the Illuminati by means of punishment. Why I am up so late- as night turns slowly to morning- I have no idea. At the end of a narrow path through a crisscross wire fence, the pub is still open. A small crowd of young people, all dressed up, wander in and out; some of them passing through the gate to the garden-cum-parking area where I am. Inside the pub an exercise class seems to be finishing up, or perhaps it's a televised recording of the same- it's hard to tell for certain. The few women scattered around the pub terrace are alluringly dressed; but so few in number that I decide not to join the party. (Interestingly, however, I feel I have been inside this pub or late-night club in many other dreams...)

As I walk back to my vehicle, I encounter a group of girls from the office where I used to work: Lauren Melly, Lauren Armstrong, Marianne, etc. I pretend to be stoned and drunk, a slightly masochistic act because I am fully aware that such behaviour will make me the butt of work gossip for weeks to come. My act, culminating in a long drawn out, rather creepy stoned giggle- is so convincing I can feel the fear building in my audience. I break character to reassure the girls I was kidding around.

'I'm a bit pissed and stoned,' I say, 'but nothing as bad as that!' They go into hysterics; and whilst laughing another girl- a prettier version of another one of my former colleagues- returns to the group, leans forward, and rests her arm on my knee. It's a nice feeling, and at that point I awaken.

*

I am back at Ellis Taylor's house, and he's showing me photographs and songs taken (and composed) over the course of his various imaginary careers. Shots from a space shuttle flight I later discover he's never been on. A photograph of himself as a young boy and a friend... The friend is wearing a long, almost gondola-shaped 'thing' on his head. ET attempts to pluck at my heartstrings claiming that some hospital or other has launched an appeal to locate the boy in the hat; or perhaps- the details are hazy- that it has the gondola-shaped thing in its possession and is holding it until evidence emerges as to the identity of its true owner. This strikes me as unseasonably sad and I want to help out. Later, his story changes: apparently it was never that gondola exactly... and I never said it was, he implies... I am enraged by Ellis's palpable untrustworthiness, and his pathological need to engage people in his fantasies.

Back in my parents' house, I'm listening (appropriately) to Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles, on a tape I think ET may well have left with me. A very strange experience: the middle of the night, rain is pouring outside... and there are all these new, never-before-heard harmonies and voices emerging from the speakers. Outside a procession of cars- one every few minutes- turns in our driveway, sometimes missing the walls by very narrow margins. Thoroughly spooked, I switch ET's tape off and listen instead to a phone-in on BBC Radio Five. The caller is drunk. The host plays along, laughing; and later edits together some of his more insane drunken moments into a kind of radio montage that he uses to spice up the instrumental introductions to various popular songs.

I go outside and to my surprise several large pot plants adorn the outside of the property, growing rapidly in the rainy conditions. I look down and there, at my feet, a whole tray full of tiny pot plants has swerved up the drive and is attempting to execute a labourious three-point turn.

'Are you alright?' I ask, solicitiously, but the foliage does not seem grateful for my intervention.

Later, a man in a large SUV-type vehicle pulls up... and begins drawing petrol from a pump that has sprung up in the driveway. He observes the now-yellowing pot plants growing from the windows and urges me to take them indoors before the rain spoils them. As I make to do so, one hand fumbles on something sharp on the inner rim of one of the posts... which falls to the ground, but does not smash. I look down.

There, to my disgust, is a large praying mantis.

'What would have happened if that thing had bitten me?' I ask the well-dressed man, who I now recognise to be Simon Cowell.

'You'd have been paying for a taxi to the hospital,' he says.

'You mean with all your money you wouldn't have put your hand in your pocket on my behalf then?' I ask... but Cowell just laughs, amusedly.